I’m begging you, don’t think better of me. I am not what you’ve dreamed me up to be. I am still a student and I have so much to learn.

I do that same thing you know. I watch other people online, especially the bloggers putting out clever easy beautiful content, eBooks, posts that seem so duh, so easy, so pretty, so clairvoyant. I measure myself up at light-speed and I find myself lacking. There is always someone that’s more successful, skinnier, prettier, more prolific, and seems to have sped past you as you stood there with your thumb up your you know where trying to decide if you even like yourself.

I am not the gal blogger who writes tremendously artful fluid thought-provoking pinnable posts which make whatever product is being sold seem like the exact thing that makes your flavor of mothering look even better. Who takes the perfect clean styled pictures of their cute child with flour on their faces and their elfin bodies and makes it look all so so easy and even the hard times seem bearable.

I am not the “share every detail and bad thought constantly to excess while using stream of consciousness, profanity, and humor to hit some amazing moments inside my profuse profane writing and gain lots of followers” blogger. Her following is gargantuan and she fascinates me but I am not her.

I am not the amazing photog or cook or crafter who makes you wish you could just see stuff that way to even take the pictures in the perfectly decorated home as you style effortlessly while your really good baby sleeps and you enjoy alone time. She has the exact perfect friends she met at that wonderful conference she attended while her mother/mother in law watched the children and she used up that savings account she made from all the coupons she’d clipped and money made on a swap and sell site online.

And no I’m not the really frustrated extraordinarily talented and tell-it-like-it-is Momma of five and writer who had a few scary years in the gutter but has risen to impressive heights and now has a huge following and is everywhere, has an e-course, and is totally transparent so you still have to like her.

I have watched these wonderful hard-working women achieve their mind-blowing goals and I have thought, “I am not that good. I am not worthy. There’s a reason I can’t get published or pull my thoughts together to create more than a few posts a week. I am not that good.”

I am just a human, a woman, a writer, a blogger, and a mother. A fan of alternative music who has to recreate the wheel constantly, who talks loudly, yells at her kids, and feels passionately about creativity, self-development, inspiration, and happiness. I am no better or no worse off than you. So please don’t ever give me that credit.

We are equals. Never forget that my outsides are not your insides. We have too much in common to forget we don’t.

And If you enjoyed what you read, subscribe, via the subscription box in the sidebar, to my thrice weekly posts via your emailbox. And visit me on Instagram to see my daily pictures, friend me or like my page on Facebook. Or come find me on Twitter or Pinterest too. I am always practicing Intentional Intouchness so chat at me please. I live for conversations.

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6 Responses to “I Am Not Better Than You”

Like. Learn is a forever thing. …words are mirriors carefully arranged to cast an image…. I once had an illusion where a dictionary fell off the shelf scattering its contents accross the floor. As i gathered them up, it occurred to me that here are all the great books as well as all the stories never told.

I love dream imagery Donald. I once had a dream that I was sewing on my face with a quill. You can rewrite yourself. Vivid.
Thank you so very much for taking the time to read and to comment. It makes this process meaningful again and again.
Love,
Shalagh

Oh my goodness, I can so relate to this post. Well said and great writing. Funny and insightful. I too can get caught up in comparing, wondering what the hell is wrong with me, why can’t I do it and do these other bloggers ever sleep? Yup, we are all equals doing the best we can. Thank you for writing such an affirming post.

Kira, You’re welcome and I needed to say it for my own benefit but also because I’m horrified at being used as someone else’s comparison point to be unhappy. My life is often a chaotic mess I’m actively trying to clean up. But still. Thank you so much for reading and speaking out from the great abyss that I sometimes feel I’m speaking to. You and me sister, we’re cooking here.
Love,
Shalagh

What’s so great about being profane? Lol. I mean you list things that aren’t very flattering, really thinking about them. And I see that you wrote this in part to get someone else to stop comparing themselves to you. But, seriously, the confusing irony of wanting to be imperfectly perfect.

Different but equal… and a lot of detail is missing in whatever one tries compare him/herself to.

Adam,
What’s so great about being profane is that it gets you followers. Hands down, any post or even Facebook post that has “asshole” or “nazi” or “fuckhead” in it wins the clicks. I have refused to do that. Because I know that the people who would follow the scintillating words wouldn’t be a fit necessarily for my content. But there’s lots of people gaining followships with this method. Dig man. Tough to know I have integrity which means one comprehender at a time, ya know?
Hope you had joy and ease in your weekend too.
Love,
Shalagh

My name is Shalagh Hogan, pronounced Shay-La. I'm the mother of a teen, a six year-old, and I turned 52 this year. This blog was born in 2011 and my hope and joy as a writer, an artist, and an uber-creative, is that by sharing my journey of self-discovery, others will gain inspiration and permission for their own journeys.

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